There was a health worker visiting some of the farms in the backcountry here, trying to convince the hidebound old ranchers that some of the "modern" advances were good ideas. One in particular was adamant about window screens -- ABSOLUTELY NOT! Too expensive and besides, his daddy didn't need 'em and his granddaddy didn't and you know the sort of person. Told her all he needed was to sprinkle a little lime in the outhouse now and then and the fly problem was solved.

Couple months later the health worker dropped by and found the house replete with screens: window screens, screen doors, even screens over the vents in the eaves and in the attic. She was stunned, and asked the old boy what had converted him him. He hemmed and hawed around and find said, "Well, there wuz these white footprints on ma food."

I sprinkle brewer's yeast in the dry dog food in the summer to help with the fly problem, and I don't know if it works but they LOVE brewer's yeast. I put up the baggie yesterday. I'd been seeing flies on Cinnamon each time I looked out, but every time I looked today when she was on the porch there weren't any flies on her.

Pardon the mundane post and habitual lack of wit, what kind of shape would the world be in if some of us didn't actively practice the art of mundaness, eh?

Re: baggies of water and flies, a couple of restaurants in my area have starting doing this and swear by it. However, they just started doing it a month or so ago, and fly season is not fully upon us yet.

One of them had hand-printed a little card with an explanation, and it was similar to this explanation..

Agreed, Rapaire, it's probably a number of different factors. The reading I've done lately makes me doubt that CO2 is the major one among those factors, though...or even a major one...and it also makes me doubt that global warming is anything more than a cyclical natural event which has occurred repeatedly for millions of years, in between very long glacial periods, and without any contribution from human industrial activity.

Therefore I think we are being scammed at the moment by the global warming scare.

I'm not too worried about global warming, frankly. What does worry me a great deal is the massive deforestation that is occurring, for one and the loss of arable land for another, and the loss of pure drinking water sources, and the possibility of global cooling. We can afford to be in a warm period. Warm periods are good for almost every form of life on this planet. We cannot afford to go into another 100,000 year long ice age.

However, we couldn't stop that if it started again, no matter how much CO2 we pumped into the atmosphere, so I guess there's really little point in my worrying about it. It's beyond our control.

Here's an interesting thing I came across in my reading, Amos. It seems that global warming itself tends to cause an increase in the buildup up CO2 in the atmosphere through natural processes.

Thus, rather than the CO2 increase leading the warming, it may well be the other way around.

I am not saying CO2 is not a greenhouse gas. It is. And it contributes some to planetary warming. But what I am saying is that planetary warming phases themselves appear to cause more natural release of CO2, and that the part the CO2 plays in the process regarding increasing overall warming is quite small...and not the significant factor in starting off a global warming phase, which is more likely started off and basically governed by the changing flows of energy between the sun and the Earth.

More release of CO2 encourages the growth of plants. Increased vegetation in time reduces the CO2. So it's a self-balancing system, as long as plants are allowed to flourish over vast areas.

Hower, we ARE most definitely doing damage to the planet by cutting down our old growth forests, such as in the Amazon, and that's a huge problem. It leads to the ruination of land, desertification, destruction of many plants and animals, and so on. But this is another issue quite apart from CO2 and global warming.

Remember: the primary greenhouse gas is water vapor! So if you want to reduce greenhouse gases...stop watering your lawn!!!!! ;-)

I'm not saying that we aren't in a warming phase right now, Amos. I'm saying that it's due to the sun pouring more energy onto planet Earth...the sun being in a more active phase in recent times...and that it has very little to do with human affairs at all.

I'm saying that the "crisis" we are being presented with in the media is mostly hype...hype aimed at some political objective, I'm not sure what. And it's fashionable right now, and a lot of people are making a lot of money by jumping on that bandwagon. And if you are in the field of research and you oppose fashion you run a real risk of: ridicule...loss of work...and losing your sources of funding.

The Earth has been through many of these warming phases before, long before the industrial revolution occurred. It has been through at least one significant cooling phase during the industrial revolution. It survived all of them quite nicely.

The only thing we really have to fear is the end of this overall warm phase that we've been in for about the last 10,000 years...and the onset of another lengthy ice age. If that were to occur, then our civilization would be very heavily damaged by it.

Do you know that in the medieval warm period Greenland was so warm that the Vikings settled there and were growing crops? The planet is clearly quite a bit cooler now. You can't grow crops in Greenland these days. What made the planet so warm when the Vikings were in their heyday? There was no industrial revolution happening at that time.

I'll tell you what did...the sun did. It was in a more active phase at that time, and the Earth was warmer.

The temperatures are the temperatures, LH. One thing that is new is the discovery of the Niiler striations which may indicate the ocean systems are scrubbing more CO2 out of the atmosphere than was previously predicted.

But I would like to know what data ou have been reviewing that has changed your mind. I'd love to get over global warming because something I read on the MOAB made it all okay!!!

Amos, I am brushing up on the science, and that's why my opinion has changed radically about (manmade) global warming. For the last 2 or 3 years I was an enthusiastic believer in Al Gore's entire position on the matter and he was my hero. I loved the movie "An Inconvenient Truth". I wondered how such a great guy could possibly have NOT become president.

I am now beginning to have serious doubts about the manmade global warming disaster theory, due to a number of articles I have read by scientists who suggest that it is Al Gore who needs to brush up on the science. ;-)

Now the fact is, 99.99% of the people (the general public, I mean) who have an opinion on manmade global warming are merely repeating...unquestioningly parroting and repeating...what they have heard in the mainstream media about it, and the mainstream media have been massively pushing the disaster story of manmade global warming.

The congregation is responding predictably, as they always do, and simply parroting whatever they are told to believe.

I'm beginning not to believe it anymore, that's all. You're welcome to your opinion. 2 months ago I would have agreed with you wholeheartedly, because I was still part of the general congregation on that, believing what I was being told every day, and I had not yet begun to even consider questioning the prevailing orthodoxy on this matter. Like I said, Al Gore was my hero.

Wait and see. I bet you that the present alarmist predictions about manmade global warming will prove to be as faulty and off the mark as the alarmist predictions about global cooling (a new ice age!) were in the 40s, 50s, and 70s.

Just wait 10 years. (if we live that long) I bet you! If we're both still alive and in touch 10 years from now, check back with me and see if the present "global warming" orthodoxy and disaster fever has gone out of style yet and been replaced with some new hoopla for people to obsess about.

Amos, those things are happening because the poles are slidign 90 degrees: the South Pole is sliding to the West and so is the North Pole. Soon we will only have one pole, and the Earth will be a monopole. This will mess some things up somewhat.

Brush up on the science. It is not the relative volume of CO2 to nitrogen and oxygen that makes up the greenhouse effect, per se. It is the fact that the total volume of CO2 (and other gasses contibuting to greenhousing) is ramping up. Not in the same proportion as it has cyclically over the last few centuries, not linearly, but exponentially.

Go see the slides and the numbers Gore presents and then come back with your explanation for the crumbling of the Arctic, the melting of the permafrost, and the unprecedented recession of icecaps both North and South.

I don't know of anything that repels them, but I do know that a bag of shit will attract them...if you change your mind. It has to have some air holes, though, because if it's sealed then the flies can't smell the shit.

Condolences, Rapaire. It is getting hot and windy here. I hung out an experimental bag of water (a clear plastic ziplock baggie) to see if it really does work to repel flies from around the back porch (and maybe give the dogs a break).

The theory of planetary warming (as it presently stands) is highly questionable. Is anyone else out there aware that CO2 comprises only about .038 per cent of the entire atmosphere????

Earth's dry atmosphere: 78% Nitrogen, 21% Oxygen, .93% Argon, .038% a mere sliver of CO2, and the teeny amount remaining is made up of Neon, Helium, Methan, Krypton, and Hydrogen.

Water vapor in atmosphere: about 3 to 4% of atomsphere by volume near the surface of the planet, far less in the upper atmosphere.

Water vapor is the primary greenhouse gas, and the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere is more or less constant. During a warm period when the dinosaurs and plant life were absolutely flourishing all over this planet there was an enormously higher level of CO2 in the atmosphere than at present. Life was flourishing on planet Earth at that time. The CO2 in the atmosphere at that time comprised about 12% of the atmosphere, and it was due to major volcanic emmissions. That was over 300 times the present level of atmospheric CO2! This proved a boon to luxuriant plant life at the time, because plants "eat" CO2 and need it to survive. In time the CO2 moderated to its present level of .038% of the atmosphere. That's about 4 hundredths of a percent, folks! Wow, big threat! In the 1940s and 50s the media were freaked about global cooling and there were dire predictions of a possibly imminent new ice age. Ha. Ha. Now we're hearing the opposite scare story. I don't buy it.

The changes in the Earth's overall temperature appear to be cyclical in nature if you look at the geological record over the past few million years, and they are probably linked primarily to the changing (and cyclical) energies coming from the sun which is, after all, the active agent that causes this planet to be warm in the first place. We have been in a period of unusually high sun spot activity for the past decade...reputedly the highest in the last 1,000 years. That means a more active sun. That means a warmer planet Earth...for the time being.

However, I do sympathize with Rapaire's plight. Snow in May is simply just downright disgusting.

Um...Rapaire, calm down and think. You will realize that, first of all, S---f is not a dirty word and can be spelled out without risking tender ears: s-m-u-r-f. See? And second of all, you are making history here by completely disproving the theory of planetary warming. We're saved, and we owe it all to Pocatello!

Mom, you don't want to hear the language I'm using about it because not only would it shock Amos's tender ears and gentle upbringing, but so far it has killed every mouse, mole, and vole for five miles around, driven the cougars and bears and wolves (oh my!) clear to Canada, and peeled the paint off six UP freight trains. It has cause three dynamite magazines at the Simplot mine to explode and whatever shingles were left on the Legion Hovel have been blasted into oblivion.

Mom, today is May Day. The First of May. We should be dancing around a May Pole or marching in solidarity with other workers of the world. But you know what, Mom?

MOM, you can open your eyes now! We're here. The lights aren't all on yet and the bedding isn't unpacked, but have a seat here in this comfy armchair and Max will be by with your sleeping bag and a battery lantern soon.

My heart is a raisin? All dry and shriveled up? I guess I'd best hie me to the cardiologist. Maybe a good long soak in rum or brandy will fix it....

By the way, "Little Billy" Bigge is in town, bass fiddle and all. He was cadging drinks up at the Legion Hovel last night. He wanted to play, but with his left arm in a cast he couldn't get the fiddle up under his chin, praise be to God. The last time he showed up he danged near punctured his carotid artery with the spike on the bottom of the thing. The Legionaires and Legionettes called the EMTs, of course, but they don't like to do that because when the EMTs leave there's considerably less booze for the Hovel habitants and the ambulance invariably knocks over the statue of Hiram Borah that's in the middle of the driveway.

Hiram, as you know, was the Senator's older (and illegitimate) brother. He was the first "meter maid" in town and was killed by a runaway milk wagon that was making its daily hootch deliveries back in 1921 when the horse was spooked a burst of maniacal laughter from a cowboy enjoying the soi-disant "pleasures" of "Miss Bircher's Home of Pleasure and Pain" across the street from the Anglican Church.

Such gallusy manners!! A true chent! And no spinner for him. I tried to make it happen for you, but you defeated yourself, Rapaire. Let the record show, I did all that a man could do to get you your spinner. But, le coeur as ses raisons, as we all know.

I would not make light of what others have seen or experienced and are serious about any more than I'd scoff at someone's religious beliefs because they were not mine. I learned long ago that I don't have all the answers. In fact, I learned I might not have any at all.

Amos, I am completely fed up with telling the details of those sightings online (or offline) to self-absorbed people who have little respect or inclination to give a fair listen to anyone else's opinion but their own, so forget it. Suffice to say, I saw vehicles which were clearly technological in nature, intelligently controlled, and very probably not ours. They could have been secret vehicles built by our Earthly governments, I suppose...but I doubt it.

Yes, Rapaire, they would still be unidentified if recognized as "UFOs". If you don't know whose vehicle it is or where it came from or how it functions then it's unidentified.